Let the belt do its thing! (no, not the belt that holds up your pants...)

So yesterday morning I hustled the big kids off to school, and dragged the little two to the grocery store with me. Now those of you with kids know what a hassle it is to buy groceries with children. You want to get in and out as fast as you can with as little commotion as possible. So there I am at the store with Sarah (2-1/2) and Jason (15 months), and things have gone smoothly. I've been shopping at the same store for 7 years so I have my routine down. Non-foods, staples, produce, bread, meat, dairy. Meat and dairy last, of course, so they stay cold. It was a pretty quick trip and we made our way to checkout. Now, given that I've been shopping at the same store for 7 years, I recognize the checkout clerks, and there are some that I purposefully avoid - like the one who is overly-friendly with my kids (STOP TOUCHING MY KIDS!), the super slow one, you get the idea. Well yesterday I forgot about the short one who doesn't let the belt 'do its thing'. This woman can't be more than 5'2", and does she scan the items in the order I place them on the belt? Which is the way I want them bagged? Nooooooooo......she has to use her own method, picking and choosing from what I've placed there as she stretches as far as she can to reach what she wants. So the belt's not rolling forward because she hasn't taken all the stuff off the front, and I can't finish unloading the cart because the other end is still full. So I then end up shoving everything forward to make room. Oh, and she also knots all the plastic bags at the top, which I then have to rip open when I get home, making them almost useless for re-using as trash bags. Grrrr. (and yes, I do have re-usable grocery bags, but I don't always remember them as I am trying to remember 2 kids, 2 sippy cups, 2 snacks, and my coffee mug. Can't go shopping without my coffee!) And so, when I get home, I must root through ALL the bags immediately, hunting for the cold things to put away, before I race back out the door to pick up William from preschool. At least Jason had fallen asleep at this point, and I didn't have a crying baby to deal with.

My Messy Kitchen...and a pizza!

If you were to make a 'pop-in' at my house, this is what you'd find on my kitchen counter. Because, as noted earlier in the Cheerio-picnic post, the latch on the cabinet where I keep the cereal is broken, and my tiny kitchen has no pantry. (I would die to have a pantry; well, maybe not, but I really really want one!) So. Jason was entirely too comfortable helping himself to the cereal, so now it sits all day long on the counter. Where I help myself to the Mini Wheats! Because they are good snacking! No wonder the last 5 baby pounds (the hardest to lose, by the way) aren't going anywhere. But I'm not getting into that, at least not today. So we have 2 containers, one box, and a basket that I keep the misc. cereal in once the bags are more than half gone. Also on the counter is my bread machine, which (thankfully) I'm actually using again to make pizza dough (yum!). And lastly, my (unused) Cappuccino machine. Which I love, but it's really too much effort at this point to make Cappuccino when I want one, especially when I have to move all that stuff to get to it. Oh, and the pile in between the cereal? That's from a project I started in November - the 'recipe organization' project. Notice I said November? Yes. I bought an antique wooden card file on ebay with the intention of organizing my recipes onto note cards & into pretty binders. What with the holidays and my new 'hobbies' - blogging and Face Book! who has time for projects? =-) Seriously, I do intend to get back to it, as soon as I finish deep-cleaning my bedroom. Which I started 2 weeks ago. Maybe tomorrow....


Here's the pizza part - and no, I have no idea why the picture is coming up sideways, that's not how I took it, and I don't really know enough about Blogger to fix it, but it sort of looks gravity-defying, doesn't it? Anyway. I tried "Mitch's Basic Pizza Dough" from Fabulous Foods.com, and it's really terrific! I used 3 cups of bread flour and 1/2 cup semolina instead of the all-purpose flour, and I made the dough in my bread machine. It came out just perfect! I made 2 14" pizzas, baked on my baking stone (pre-heated) at 500 degrees for 8 minutes each and they were really, really good. Next I'm going to try shredding my own cheese, I hear from my sister that it makes a big difference. Yum! Can't wait for our next pizza night to have it again!

This is what we've been reduced to...

So what we have here is a piece of cardboard taped to the front of my flat screen tv, which is usually covered in fingerprints. Because, as you can see, it's right at child-level. Why do we have a piece of cardboard taped to the front of my tv? Because baby JJ (happily grinning for the camera) has discovered a new favorite thing: turning off the flat screen tv; because the button is right there. And it makes his sister (you can just see the top of her head) scream! And he thinks that's great fun. I wish I was 15 months old! Let me tell you some other things about my tv and cabinet; you can't really see it from here, but about 2 weeks ago (and about a year too late) we bought a piece of glass for the shelf the tv is sitting on. Because, yes, it's at child height and they like to bang toys on it. Another lovely home-made addition to my tv cabinet is what's affectionately called the tv-cozy. As in tea-cozy, but for the tv. No, it's not to protect the kids from the corners of the furniture, it's to protect the furniture from the kids. This was also about 6 months too late. You know I thought we'd learned from the first two that nice things and kids just don't mix, but I guess not. Note to those without kids yet but planning to have some: buy disposable furniture. It's just going to get trashed. Then in 20 years when they move out you can have the nice things you always wanted! Now for some coffee...enjoy your day!

I LOVE THIS!

The other day the spring Pottery Barn catalog arrived in my mailbox and I have to admit, I am positively drooling over this daily organization system. I only wish I had somewhere to put it! White board calendar, docking/charging station, corkboards, file pockets, one of them even has a digital picture frame embedded in it. They hang on stainless steel rods, so you could move things around and be oh-so organized! Although, you'd have to really KEEP it organized if it was anywhere on public view. Hmmm...something to think about.